European leaders show no interest in shielding EU from NSA

Demonstrators take part in a protest against the US National Security Agency (NSA) collecting German emails, online chats and phone calls and sharing some of it with the country's intelligence services in Berlin on July 27, 2013. (AFP Photo / John Macdougall) / AFP

EU could make solid data protection regulations, but in the midst of debates it is becoming obvious that European political leaders aren’t willing to take serious steps in this direction, an MEP from the Swedish Pirate Party, Amelia Andersdotter, told RT.

RT:Spying on the UN violates International Law. How do
you think the organization is going to react to this
revelation?

Amelia Andersdotter: I hope that they will have the
courage to react very strongly against these revelations because
ultimately damaging to the trust free market in the world that
the United States is acting like this.

AA: I am not sure exactly which agency they were listening
to. The UN does a lot of things but terrorist threats have
generally been described as anything from copyright infringement
to making of bombs that could be harming people. We have a very
vague understanding in the international discourse today of how
we make policy especially in Western Europe and the US. We don’t
know what we mean by war. Two weeks ago I heard in Sweden that
copyright infringement can be war. What is war then? Is that what
the US is trying to stop in the UN? We don’t know because there
is no logic to how they use to word ‘war’.

RT:What about the idea that the NSA has already been
eligibly spying on the EU along with these latest revelations.
What effect does it have on America’s reputation in Brussels? Is
there any legislation setting up in order to shield itself from
the NSA?

AA: We could make a good data protection regulation and we
are discussing it in the EU. However the National Security
debates around the data protection regulation are now incredibly
tough and it seems that European political leaders are not as
willing to take steps to safeguard the trust and confidence in
public networks and internet networks that we as citizens would
like them to undertake. What we see in Europe is a mish mash of
outraged statements and political inaction.

RT:Data protection isn’t something that your party
champions. You are all about allowing downloading content to be
used by anybody and to break the copyright laws. Isn’t that
contradictory to what you are saying? How is it different to what
the NSA is doing?

AA: Having a massive surveillance program for everyone on
the planet and using cultural works to engage into social
activities with others is a major difference. Information is
power and knowledge is power. What we want a system in which that
power is balanced. Copyright strikes that balance in a completely
wrong way and the data protection law in the European Union has
also proven to strike that balance in a completely wrong way. We
as citizens need to be empowered through our legislation in a way
such that we can make claims and exercise power ourselves through
our identities in a way that we interact with other people and I
think that advocating a corporate reform as well as a data
protection reform is perfectly consistent inside that general
idea. Information is power and we need to balance out the power.